It just doesn’t feel like St. Patrick’s Day without a little potato art, a fun way to introduce a new painting “tool” to toddlers. The simplest of all is to make potato prints and here are a few fun ways to make that oldie-but-goodie feel novel.

First, I set out a dish of green paint (for the Emerald Isle of course) and showed Veronika how to dip the cut sides of a raw potato in the paint, then press onto a piece of paper. Cover the paper with lots of prints and you have a pretty little piece of artwork!

For something with more of a design element, I showed Veronika how to press four prints together so they looked like the four leaves of a clover.

All you need to do is add a stem with green marker!

She also thought it was neat to dip the potatoes in paint and then smear across the paper instead of simply stamping.

We got some really neat swirls and designs like this!

Of course there’s no need to stick with green paint, or even the St. Patrick’s theme, especially if you try this craft at another time of  year. To wit, Veronika chose a little pink paint and we made a few pink-stamped ovals with it.

Once the paint dried, I cut out triangle and oval shapes from pink construction paper to be a pig’s ears and snout. She loved gluing these down, along with wiggle eyes.

“He says oink oink!” she told me proudly.

I drew on a few final facial features, so then she wanted to draw too, telling me she was adding “three black cheeks”.

All of the above would make beautiful decorations to your home for St. Patrick’s Day, or cards to send in the mail!

Here’s a pretty front door decoration for St. Patrick’s Day, with steps that kids can help out with, too! This is a riff on a similar wreath we made for Valentine’s Day, and the inspiration for both is care of the ever-fabulous Hands on as We Grow.

To start, you’ll need a cardboard circle as the base. A pizza box would have been ideal, but I used poster board and hot glued two layers together for added durability, since we had no pizza in the house.

I then set out a plate of green paint along with squares of green and orange tissue paper (for the colors of the Irish flag). As I wadded up each tissue square into a little “flower”, I handed it to Veronika. Her job was to dip in the green paint!

We made dollops of glue on the white wreath background and pressed down the flowers. She loved helping with the glue even more than the paint. I left a little of the white cardboard showing, too, as the third color of the Irish flag.

While the glue and paint were drying, I also cut hearts from green construction paper. Three hearts taped together become a shamrock! These made a nice touch here and there on the wreath.

Finally, I cut strands of orange and green ribbon and hot-glued onto the back of the wreath, then looped over the hook on our front door.

Here’s wishing you the luck of the Irish this St. Patrick’s Day!

It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, which means cue the potato painting projects! Today, Veronika and I painted with potatoes in a way that made a delightful mess, plus it got us outside in a first burst of spring warmth.

To set up, you’ll need cooked and cooled potatoes cut into chunks of various sizes. You can use all one type of potato, but for novelty I used one sweet potato and two red ones. Next time I would add in tiny new potatoes, too!

I unrolled a long piece of butcher paper on the grass and then set out plates with paint in the colors of the Irish flag: green, orange, and white. To make your artwork, pierce each soft piece of potato with a craft stick and dip in paint. Hold it up over the paper…

…then drop!

Veronika immediately needed a turn. She loved that she could dip the potatoes in the paint without getting messy thanks to the craft stick handles. The first time she held a potato aloft over our paper, she seemed unsure that she was really supposed to drop it.

At first, she would bend down and use it more like a stamp. But then she grew braver, and…

Drop! Each landing potato makes a great splattered print on the paper. Have fun experimenting and dropping the potatoes from different heights, as well as using them like stamps with the craft stick handles.

We even covered one round red potato with paint and then rolled it along with a craft stick as a paddle, leaving a trail of green paint behind. As mentioned, I think small new potatoes would be fun dipped in paint and then scattered down onto the paper, so we’ll add those in next time.